* Pennsylvania's New Welfare System Takes Effect On Monday. The Changes Are Applauded, But Also Feared.

March 02, 1997|by RON DEVLIN And PETE LEFFLER, The Morning Call

The mere thought of being without a safety net terrifies Amy Kreisher, who grew up on welfare and is raising her two children the same way.

Kreisher, 22,shook as she stepped to the podium during a recent public hearing on the state's new welfare system in Bethlehem's Town Hall.

Will there be a job for her? Will it pay enough to live on? Will she be able to afford child care? What about medical care? And, will she lose her federally-subsidized housing?

"I've never known anything but being on welfare," she said, tears in her eyes. "I'm trying to change my life, but I still need help."

Kreisher, caught in the crosswinds of social change, represents both the hope and the uncertainty of the state's new welfare system that goes into effect Monday.

She wants a job, desperately. Yet, she's afraid she and her children simply cannot exist on a $4.75-an-hour job with no benefits.

Architects of the new welfare system insist that recipients such as Kreisher will be better off working, even 20 hours a week at a minimum-wage job.

A partial welfare check plus a paycheck, the state claims, add up to a better life for the half-million women and children who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the main welfare program in Pennsylvania.

And, perhaps more importantly, it will start welfare recipients on the road to self-sufficiency and make them feel better about themselves.

The test of whether the welfare system of the 21st century is a revolutionary reform or a brash attempt to push people off the rolls begins Monday with the boldest social welfare experiment since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

In what marks a fundamental shift in the way America treats its poor, the federal and state governments will no longer pump money into welfare as an entitlement to the poor.

From now on, states will receive a block grant -- $719 million a year in Pennsylvania -- and then Washington will wash its hands of the issue.

It will be up to the state Department of Public Welfare to manage the federal grant, which when matched by state funds is more than $1 billion a year.

To make it work, the state will have to get as many recipients as possible into jobs as quickly as possible, and use the savings to help others and expand child care, transportation and job training subsidies.

In a nutshell, that's Pennsylvania's new welfare system.

And, Monday, the clock starts ticking on deadlines imposed by Washington to keep Harrisburg's feet to the welfare reform fire.

By October, the state must have 17 percent of its "employable adults" on welfare working or in work-related activities. With adjustments, that figure must grow to 50 percent by 2002.

"From day one, when you walk through the door, the focus will be on jobs," said Ray Schlechter, who manages the public assistance office in Lehigh County.

Starting Monday, under Transitional Assistance to Needy Families, which replaces AFDC, applicants must sign an Agreement of Mutual Responsibility.

The recipient's responsibility -- understand that a welfare check is temporary and take defined steps to get off welfare.

The state's responsibility -- provide temporary financial aid and help the recipient find a job.

Within the next six months, as their cases are reviewed, about 15,000 people, mostly women, on welfare in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding counties will sign an agreement and be given eight weeks to find a job.

If they find a job, they must take it -- regardless of pay, location or shift -- or ultimately risk losing welfare for life.

If they don't find a job, they will be assigned a community service or some other approved work activity. People in school or job training courses are exempt from working for a year.

Few dispute that the welfare system needs fixing.

Even advocates for the poor like MaryEllen Shuman, executive director of ProJeCt of Easton, a training agency, say welfare handouts have bred dependency and stolen dignity.

"I believe we're all responsible for that because we let it go on for so long," she said.

The existing system provides disincentives to working. Earning a paycheck can result in the loss of medical and child care benefits. Families suffer because a common-law husband may live elsewhere so the mother and children qualify for welfare.

But the new approach worries many like Shuman. After decades of welfare entitlements, she said, "we can't fix it in five years."

It's a get-tough approach, to be sure. Too tough, some feel, too soon.

"We're definitely expecting people to pull themselves together more quickly," said Susan L. Averett, who teaches economics at Lafayette College. "The new philosophy seems to be --we're not going to support you, you're on your own, sink or swim."

Christine Nickel, 31, a single-parent raising two kids on welfare in Allentown, fears her family will suffer. She works full-time at Community Services for Children in Bethlehem, and collects a partial welfare check.